


Sea Tears

by soondubu



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Budding Love, Gen, Mild Angst, Summer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-18
Updated: 2019-06-18
Packaged: 2020-05-14 01:02:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,210
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19262815
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/soondubu/pseuds/soondubu
Summary: For Exo Seasonal Fest round 2Prompt Petal #183: The ocean has always been Jongin's greatest love. No wonder he became a part of it.ㅡㅡㅡInstead of a leisurely summer vacation, Kyungsoo is whisked away to Jeju to visit his grandmother, who is not expected to make it to Chuseok. With the fun of visiting family dulled, and in his general frustration of being torn away from his own summer plans, he finds himself at the docks, observing for the first time the magic of thehaenyeo: the women who dive year-round to provide food for their families. It's there he meets Jongin, a boy who seems to know exactly the struggle he's having. He discovers, however, that they have very different ways of dealing with the pressures of family and society, and that Jongin is far less willing to take a polite "no" for an answer.





	Sea Tears

**Author's Note:**

> A dated, but interesting view on the _haenyeo_ can be found [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6XDN_VA-m0&feature=youtu.be). I don't even begin to do their wonder any justice.

Honestly, this wasn't how Kyungsoo had intended or expected to spend his summer vacation. He had a pile of homework to get through (which he was admittedly procrastinating on, at least for the first week). He had a whole list of movies to catch up on at the cinema. He had already made plans with friends to visit Lotte world at least twice before the school year really ramped up and they had no time to do anything at all. Instead, he was here, in a tiny village hugging the coast of Jeju, where his grandmother had grown up, spending the waning weeks of July grappling with the reality of her impending death.

His mother had always been particularly close to his grandmother. They'd written weekly letters to each other, though phone calls were sporadic. It certainly wasn't the first time Kyungsoo had spent a summer vacation in Jeju. It was, however, the first of his teens and at perhaps the most inconvenient time in his young life. It was the summer of his fifteenth year, and the yearn for independence and autonomy was impossible to ignore now, even for a quiet son like him. The fact that his elder brother, Seungsoo, was no longer at home and blotting out the sun with his own achievements only put Kyungsoo in a better position to finally start living his best life. Except, in the eyes of his parents, particularly his grieving mother, he remained a child, and the same boy they could still shuttle into a plane at a moment's notice to take him off where they wanted him to be, regardless of the plans he had already laid out for himself.

Kyungsoo wouldn't complain. Not because he didn't want to (he did), but because he knew it wouldn't do any good. Complaints wouldn't change anything and would only cause his parents even more stress. Besides, it was clear when they arrived in town that his father didn't want to be there any more than he did, nose wrinkling at the pervading scent of the salty beach and briny shellfish. It was almost as oppressive as the humidity, the air bearing down on them like a wet blanket all but ready to be wrung out over their heads. The sky didn't look ready to open up just yet, the clouds still calm and white. But just over the ocean, far off to the west, foreboding could be squinted at, or felt in the bones of the local denizens who warned them of the incoming storm at the airport.

They settled comfortably into his aunt's home, all three of them to the same room. It was just large enough to accommodate their mattresses, though their luggage had to stay in the living room, lined up neatly behind the sofa. It was a humble house, the size reminiscent of their apartment back in Seoul, yet it somehow seemed so much larger. Maybe because there weren't so many things—gadgets, paintings, plants—and the rooms seemed to comfortably flow into one another like a river bending neatly around its obstacles. It brought the first real sense of calm over Kyungsoo, like he might be able to tolerate the next couple of weeks, even if it ended up storming the entire time they were there. At least being cooped up indoors would allow him to get through all of his assignments. That calm faltered when he discovered there was no air conditioning, and that relief came solely in the form of planting oneself in front of one of the few oscillating fans scattered throughout the house. Mentally, Kyungsoo began to count down the days: one down, and eleven to go.  


 

 

The next morning was still foreboding, but the darkest clouds still remained in the distance, far out to sea. Kyungsoo suspected that was why his parents didn't feel particularly worried about urging him to take in the sights while they spent the rest of the day with his grandmother. He of course spent the first half of the day with her, awkward and unsure, observing how fragile she looked in bed. He didn't have many memories of her, rather memories of his mother reading excerpts of her letters and curling up on the sofa with him to go through photo albums. The disconnect was palpable, and perhaps Kyungsoo was showing it a bit more than he meant to. Surprisingly, it was his grandmother who suggested he head down to the beach, hinting that there might be something there to fascinate him, unlike anything he might ever see in Seoul. The beach itself certainly fit the bill, but it wasn't until Kyungsoo made it through the village and towards the open sea and the docks that stretched out towards it like fingers that he realized what it was his grandmother actually meant.

Along the docks were almost a dozen women of various ages, all clad in wetsuits. They carried slings that sagged at their hips as they disembarked from the small boats, nets full of shellfish, octopuses, and seaweed. The younger girls had no wetsuits, but did have slings, although theirs bulged awkwardly with great balls of lightweight, orange plastic. Floats, Kyungsoo realized. He knew that these women had a name, one he couldn't quite recall though it scratched at the back of his mind. He'd seen photos of them in his mother's albums at home as she'd relayed stories from his grandmother to him about these courageous, persistent divers. Before he could dredge it up, however, he noticed that there was one person who stuck out considerably—someone who was neither diver nor boatman. It was a boy who seemed to be about Kyungsoo's age. And he was handsome in a way Kyungsoo knew, with a particularly self-conscious pang, that he was not.

Although only just past lunchtime, he could already feel his skin beginning to bake in the sun, and found himself wishing for a golden tan like the one the other boy sported, his skin glistening with the sand and salt sticking to it. Kyungsoo chose a spot nearby the work, but not close enough to interfere with it. He was the only tourist on the rocks watching the women work, and he isolated himself from the children who shouted and swam below him and who ran races in the grass behind him.

His eyes flickered back and forth between the boy and the women, who strolled and laughed towards land with a swagger to match the waves lapping at the shore. _Haenyeo_. The word came to him in an instant, as if plucked from the air or delivered in the cry of one of the birds who circled above them, no doubt hoping to dive in and steal from the heavy nets the women carried. The closest thing to mermaids people have ever seen, he mused, at least the way his mother had described them. Women who braved the sea in all seasons to scoop up any shellfish they could find, all in the name of feeding their families. It was a dying tradition, and rather sad for it; even his mother's stories had done little to highlight the magic of watching these women—these generations of families—at work.

It was inevitable, but Kyungsoo was still startled when the boy finally noticed his staring. He cracked a shy smile in amusement when Kyungsoo jumped. He waved shyly to Kyungsoo who, after a moment, cautiously and courteously waved back. Meanwhile the boy jogged forward, his hand falling on the shoulder of an older woman, much shorter than he was, seemingly to whisper something to her. She looked where he pointed and Kyungsoo felt more self-conscious than ever as he realized maybe he wasn't welcome here to stare. He was acutely aware of the sweat dripping down his brow and the way his hair and clothes clung to his skin as if he'd been swimming along with the children, and only all the more so when the boy, instead of laughing along with the women, veered away from them at the shoreline to join him. When the boy sat beside him, the only thing he said was, "I'm Jongin."

"I'm Kyungsoo."

"Where are you visiting from?" Jongin asked. Kyungsoo felt a little affronted by the way his smile grew wider at his introduction, as if he were already jumping to conclusions.

"How do you know I'm visiting?"

"Your accent," Jongin offered, but, surreptitiously or subconsciously, moved his arm beside Kyungsoo's. He looked even darker next to the almost comically pale white of Kyungsoo's skin, a side effect of a life spent indoors with his nose in a book or his eyes on a screen. In the back of his mind, he tried desperately not to make such obvious comparisons of laborers and aristocrats, and not only because it reminded him of all the homework still lurking in his suitcase.

"Seoul," Kyungsoo replied at length, more embarrassed by the admission than he felt he should be. Jongin's knowing smile didn't widen, but rather softened, like he was glad to hear the truth instead of spun stories.

"You're a long way from Seoul," Jongin said, somehow stating the obvious in a way that sounded much too much like he was only just noticing.

"My grandmother..." Kyungsoo trailed off, and Jongin's smile faded. He nodded once, and it took a few moments for Kyungsoo to realize that that was surely enough for Jongin to understand what had brought him all the way here. In a place this size, everyone must know everyone. "She'll be all right," Kyungsoo lied, and Jongin let him. "My parents are trying to convince her to come back with us. To see a doctor they were referred to."

"She'll never go." Jongin was so matter-of-fact as he spoke, though what struck Kyungsoo was the idea that even this stranger knew his grandmother better than Kyungsoo did. "The families here, they almost never leave. This is what we know. This is how we live and how we want to stay."

Kyungsoo looked Jongin over; this time it was he who heard things unsaid. A note in Jongin's voice resonated within him, but it wouldn't be until much later, with his head nestled and sweating into a pillow, that the chords would make any sense and he realized that what he heard in Jongin's voice wasn't resignation but defiance. For now, Kyungsoo simply replied, "It doesn't seem so bad. Difficult, tiresome, but not bad."

Jongin hummed, but said nothing more. In fact, the pair of them said very little at all as the sun beamed overhead. Jongin gave small explanations and introductions. His mother and his two older sisters were already out of sight, but of the children swimming he managed to locate his niece and nephew, as well as a friend of them both who, while she wasn't his niece, still called him uncle instead of brother because of some private joke between her and his sisters. Kyungsoo had laughed hard, and Jongin had too, reluctantly, the sheepishness on his face earning him a warm nudge that aggravated his sensitive skin with the salt that scraped over it from Jongin's. It was the first real sign of his impending sunburn. He didn't mind, really. Jongin was a nice surprise.  


 

 

Jongin escorted Kyungsoo back into the village, but slowly, like he wasn't truly ready to go back. "How long have you lived in Seoul?"

"I was born there," Kyungsoo said. "My mother was the first in her family to move away, when she married my father. Her sister was furious, but Grandmother always seemed to understand. She knew my mother needed to do what made her happy, even if it came at a cost." That had always been a spot of confusion for Kyungsoo, an inherent disconnect because of the way he only ever heard of the tradition but had never lived it. As he expected, Jongin nodded as if he understood it all without any further explanation, though Kyungsoo couldn't tell which sister he sided with, and was afraid to ask.

"You were right before," he answered, "when you said this life could be tiresome. It isn't because the work is hard, although it is." Jongin hesitated and bore a look that seemed to wonder aloud if he'd already said too much, as if he might be caught criticizing something he shouldn't. "There are certain expectations," he said at last, "that you either live up to, or you don't."

Kyungsoo laughed a little, and Jongin looked affronted, maybe a little embarrassed. "That's true of any life," he quickly explained. His mirth gave way almost immediately to concern, his dark, thick brows furrowing and mouth drooping as he considered his own expectations. "I have an older sibling, too, a brother. Because he came first, he did everything first. Top of the class. Graduation. His entrance exams basically let him into almost any school he wanted. There isn't anything left for me, unless I somehow figure out how to become a doctor." Kyungsoo gave a derisive snort of laughter. "The only blade I want to use is a chef's knife. But I could never settle for something like that..."

"All I want is to be able to do what they do," Jongin said softly. "To spend my days in the sea. But..." He trailed off, gesturing to his body with his own dark laugh. "Once, when my sister was really furious with me because I'd accidentally ripped her favorite dress, she told me that our parents were disappointed when I was born, because I was a boy." Kyungsoo glanced over, alarmed and perplexed. "I don't know if that's true. I'm sure it wasn't true, and she was just angry," Jongin said, hurriedly, almost apologetically for speaking ill about family in front of a stranger. Still, he continued, "I still think about it sometimes, though. Like on market days, after I screw up with the scale too many times, and I have to swap for filling and distributing baskets instead of weighing them."

Kyungsoo gestured with a nod of his head for them to turn right. Jongin shook his head and had them continue straight instead. Kyungsoo was fairly certain he knew the path to his aunt's, but then, Jongin probably knew better. "What happens with the scale? Is it just the technology, or...?"

Jongin looked sheepish, averting his gaze with a face that was quite sure this time that it had said too much. Kyungsoo started to apologize when Jongin shook his head again, sighing softly. "I...mix up the numbers, or sometimes add them together wrong. It's not my fault. And they keep thinking that the practice will help but it doesn't. And if I can't dive, and I can't be trusted to run the stall then what use is there for me?"

Frowning, Kyungsoo walked silently beside Jongin for a time. He wanted to offer comfort, but he just didn't think he knew enough about this to suggest anything worthwhile, especially because his first instinct was to suggest Jongin try for a college somewhere else. But if he couldn't do basic math consistently, he didn't think he'd have much of a shot getting into anywhere. "What about the boats?" he asked. "Fishing, or leading the _haenyeo_ out into the ocean? Or farming?"

Until his last suggestion, Jongin had seemed tenuously interested, probably because he'd considered all of these things before. "None of it is the same," he said softly, but with an air of finality that Kyungsoo understood was the end of the conversation. They walked in silence for some time then, pausing only once at a crossroads where Kyungsoo was very certain this time they needed to take a right, but allowed Jongin to take a seemingly inordinate amount of time to agree with him, and lead the way.

Kyungsoo could see his aunt's house nearing, his mother sitting with her outside, chatting. Jongin spoke up suddenly, before they were quite in earshot, and came to a halt. "Do you have any plans for tomorrow?"

With a somewhat apologetic look, Kyungsoo said, "We're spending the day with my grandmother."

Jongin nodded, unfazed. "What about after dinner, then? Before it gets dark. Can you meet me at the docks?"

Kyungsoo was puzzled and it showed, looking Jongin up and down although not an inch of him showed anything to be suspicious about. "I can try. Maybe around six?" Jongin nodded again, this time brightening the way he had at the docks earlier. It brought a small smile back to Kyungsoo's face as well.

"I'll look forward to it," Jongin said, and positively beamed as he clapped Kyungsoo on the shoulder in goodbye, then headed off towards home. Kyungsoo waited until he rounded the first corner and was out of sight before joining his mother and aunt, who immediately squawked in alarm at how pink his skin had gotten.

 

 

🙚

 

 

The sun was still surprisingly high and warm as Kyungsoo slipped out of the house, dutifully covered in sunscreen this time. It was easier today than yesterday to find his way to the docks, and when he arrived he found Jongin already there, rocking impatiently on his feet. They greeted each other with more enthusiasm, and this time Kyungsoo jogged forward to meet him. "We have to go a little further," Jongin explained, taking him by the wrist with a warm, rough hand. Kyungsoo nodded in agreement and let himself be led.

"Where are we going?"

"I have something I want to show you," was all Jongin said. There was an unrestrained note of eagerness in Jongin's voice that infected Kyungsoo at once. His curiosity turned effortlessly into anticipation as they carefully picked their way along the rocks and down to the beach. He'd never dream of following a stranger to somewhere so private in Seoul, but here felt safe. Jongin felt safe, like someone he knew already although they'd only met yesterday. He was someone who understood, even a little, the pressures of living up to things you simply couldn't live up to, no matter how hard you tried, and feeling lost and adrift because of it.

Kyungsoo's shoes filled with sand almost at once, but that was his fault for leaving them on. Jongin, he noticed, was in sandals that were quickly abandoned as soon as they hit the sand, tied to his waist so he wouldn't have to carry or lose them. Kyungsoo kept pace, which meant more sand, but he didn't give a word of complaint until they halted just before a wide cavern in the cliffside. There was a channel of ocean water that washed directly into and out of it, and even a cursory glance at the outside told Kyungsoo that there could be only a pool of water on the inside, like a great tide pool. Even Jongin eyed Kyungsoo's shoes with trepidation, and Kyungsoo made quick work of them, first dumping out the sand, then leaving them near the entrance, just out of the tide's reach. For now.

The shallow water of the tide was soothing on his warm feet, cool but not cold, the reach and pull of the waves tickling all the way up to his ankles. As Jongin pulled him along, the cave grew darker, the smell of seawater seeming to emanate from the rock walls. Jongin pulled a small utility flashlight from his pocket, the LED glowing like the sun and the damp of the walls twinkling in the light. "Watch your step," Jongin warned, as even he slowed down to carefully navigate the slippery and slimy algae and seaweed coating the natural walkway eroded into the rock around the pool. He finally halted a quarter of the way around the cave, and the pool at its center. The cave itself seemed to stretch up into forever, though it didn't go very far into the cliffside, and Kyungsoo could easily have swum across the pool and to the other side in a minute, maybe less, if it were deeper.

Each of them carefully lowered and sat along the water's edge. The walkway was little more than the product of the ocean's tireless assault, forming an uneven and incomplete circle around the perimeter of the water, and remained plenty wide enough for walking and for sitting. Of course, almost at once, the wet of the rock soaked through the seat of Kyungsoo's shorts, sending a shiver through him. If Jongin felt the same chill, he didn't show it. They let their legs dangle in the water, and where Kyungsoo expected to hit sand, he didn't. It worried him a little, particularly since the water, murky with plants and salt, didn't allow much of the LED light to filter through. What he expected would be little more than a tide pool seemed to be something much more sinister. For the first time, he worried about what Jongin might have brought him here to see, or what he might be up to. Though that apprehension didn't leave entirely, Jongin's next move helped to shake it from Kyungsoo, if only for a moment.

Wordlessly, Jongin began handing things to Kyungsoo. First, the flashlight. Then, his shirt. Kyungsoo's heavy brow again furrowed, this time with worry as Jongin left his belt and sandals with Kyungsoo, too. Before anything could be asked of him, he dove into the pool, his back arching gracefully as he leapt from the walkway and slipped in headfirst.

He was gone for a very long time.

He was gone for so long that Kyungsoo, who knew he couldn't begin to match the strength of his swimming to Jongin's, considered diving in after him. He was setting aside Jongin's things to do just that when Jongin finally surfaced from near the center of the pool. Kyungsoo breathed out as heavily as Jongin breathed in, his wide eyes trained on Jongin's face, looking for signs of distress. He only grinned in answer to such obvious concern, and paddled his way to the edge to pull himself up on it. One hand clutched a net not unlike the ones his family had filled with food from the sea, though it was much smaller, and the netting much denser. Within it was cloth bag, tied tightly, almost to the point where Jongin couldn't undo the knot he'd presumably made for himself. Again, just before Kyungsoo could offer help, Jongin managed, and the contents were astounding.

Jongin's hair dripped fat, cold drops of seawater on Kyungsoo's bare arm as they leaned over the bag between them, Kyungsoo gingerly prying it open a little wider with a couple of fingers to get a better look. It was filled almost to bursting with dozens and dozens of ugly, unpolished pearls. "They're sea tears," Jongin said like he believed it. Kyungsoo glanced up, but with the handsome, boyish wonder on Jongin's face, he didn't have the heart to correct him. "I've been saving them up for a few years now." Jongin's pride rang as clear as his voice against the cave walls, echoing endlessly like the tide. "And when I get to a hundred, everything changes."

Kyungsoo hesitated, tempering his tone before asking with slightly less exasperation than the statement warranted, "What are you talking about?"

Jongin's smile faded, and it took him some time to find the right words. Kyungsoo could already feel the shift between them, could practically hear the way Jongin was closing up again because Kyungsoo had asked precisely the wrong question. "All my life," he started carefully, "the sea has called to me. I tried once to explain it to my mother, on my twelfth birthday, when I expected that against all odds she would let me join her and my sisters. I cried when she told me I could never, even though she was gentle. She told me she understood I was envious, but that it couldn't be helped. Their work was a woman's work and a man's body could never be suited for it." Jongin faltered, and Kyungsoo almost reached a hand out to him, but something stopped him. Jongin continued, "But I can't dream of any other life. I can't think of any other place I could possibly belong away from here. Where else could I go? What else in this world could I possibly do?"

Jongin swallowed and his fingers lightly toyed with the bag they clutched, fingers rolling and the pearls tapping together like hailstones. "This bag is payment," he said definitively. "It's an offering to the god of the sea so that I can ask him to change my fate. To ask him to change _me_."

Much more carefully than before, Kyungsoo asked, "Into what?" He was sure the next word out of his mouth would be "woman." What came instead seemed to suck all of the air out of the cave, and all the sound along with it.

"One of the seafolk."

"...Like a...mermaid?" Kyungsoo couldn't help the disbelief in his voice, and the sound of it seemed to shock Jongin. He flinched away from it like a knife, and the hurt that showed in his face was very real, and as disarming as it was annoying. Jongin pulled the bag of pearls in toward himself, clinging to them with both hands now, as if Kyungsoo might try to take them. "Jongin, you know they're not–"

" _You_ don't know anything," he spat back, and that time Kyungsoo flinched. "You're not from here. You don't know our customs, our gods, our life. You don't know what you're talking about."

Jongin's voice filled the cave, reverberating and tremulous, as if the sea god himself were behind Jongin in his upset. Kyungsoo shrank even smaller, his voice barely a whisper to match. "I'm sorry," was all he could manage. Jongin glared. Then, with a huff, he tightened the knot on his clutch and once more dove into the water, to return it to its hiding spot.

They parted ways at the intersection of the street to Kyungsoo's aunts house, after a long, deafeningly quiet walk back to the village.

 

 

🙚

 

 

Kyungsoo slept fitfully that night, due only in part to the monsoon that finally rolled in from the west. The rain and the wind rattled the windows, but over breakfast his aunt remarked that it didn't seem to be nearly as bad as the reports were making it out to be. His mother nodded her agreement; Kyungsoo could only steal glances at the windows he wasn't nearly as convinced would hold against the torrent outside.

Even if he wanted to, today wouldn't be the day he could properly apologize to Jongin for yesterday. His parents forbade him from going out decisively, as if he had made any effort to try. Of course, it meant that he could no longer procrastinate on the schoolwork he'd brought, and he spent the better part of the morning catching up with his calculus text. He had much more of a mind for numbers than Jongin, but that wasn't saying very much. Still, the thoughts of him couldn't be avoided as he effortlessly tapped equations into his calculator, scribbling notes, and half-muttering to himself about just pulling Jongin aside for a few days of tutoring. Surely that would help much more than forcing him to do such fast-paced work as at a live market.

After lunch, with Kyungsoo moving on to an essay, the wind had finally started to let up a little. The rain, however, didn't seem like it would ever stop, though at least that was something he was a little more accustomed to. The windows would surely hold up to rain and thunder, even as it boomed overhead like nothing he'd ever heard and the sky lit up in bright, white, penetrating flashes. Again his thoughts drifted to Jongin, to the anguish in his voice as he'd shouted at Kyungsoo for his ignorance. Before he quite noticed what he was doing, Kyungsoo found himself on his phone, browsing through artwork on Naver. All the mermaids he came across were women, too. He could only stand to look at a few pages of it before he set his phone aside, screen down, and tried to focus on his work.

The idea that Jongin might want to change so drastically nagged at him, although far more in the realm of reality than fantasy. Becoming someone else wasn't going to solve his problem. But hard work could, and maybe he could help get him there. Maybe he'd find that teaching spoke to him, too, and then they could both start heading towards a path that led to a better fate than the aimless wandering they both found themselves in.

Kyungsoo resolved to seek Jongin out as soon as the rain let up, but it continued to rage, ebbing and flowing like the tide, until sometime just before dawn.

 

 

🙚

 

 

The following day, the rain lingered, but thankfully with none of the previous day's force and fury. There still lurked more storm clouds not all that far off shore, but after breakfast Kyungsoo sneaked from the house before anyone could tell him not to. He kept a half-lie about browsing the village market on the tip of his tongue just in case, but no one came to stop him.

He hadn't packed boots, and his sneakers soaked through pretty thoroughly before he made it to the docks, but an umbrella kept him mostly dry otherwise. The market was not terribly busy, most stalls standing empty while the few that were occupied seemed to still be setting up. Warily, Kyungsoo approached the nearest one, and was halfway through his question before he realized he didn't even know Jongin's family name. "Excuse me," he began, only the stilting of his speech preventing a stutter, though having a similar effect all the same. "Do you know which stall Jongin ... works at? His mother, and his two older sisters are–"

"Further up the way," the _ahjumma_ said, not unkindly but clearly with an air of impatience for a tourist. "You'll see the talismans hanging from the right side, and the bright blue banner." Kyungsoo bowed politely in thanks and hurried off, to not take up more of her time.

He did see the talismans, but the banner caught his eye first, as bright as the sea on a clearer day. The grey sky above them did its best to wash out the color, and it did a fair job of it, but surrounded by all of the red and patterned banners, their stall still stood out easily. One of the sisters, Kyungsoo had no idea which, was laying out baskets of cleaned shells, each of them hand-painted on the inside with small scenes of nature. He would have to remember to come back and pick up a few of them for his father, who was sure to love them. Just like with the _ahjumma_ , though, Kyungsoo wasn't sure at all what to say as he approached, and his speech was just as hesitant. "Excuse me," he began again, "I was wondering if Jongin was working today."

The girl's head snapped up at the sound of her brother's name, her eyebrows gathered together with worry. "Have you seen him?" she asked.

"N-no. Today?"

"He hasn't been home since the day before yesterday. Mom was up sick all night, worrying..."

Kyungsoo didn't know what to say. With the storm yesterday, he'd just assumed everyone had taken cover, stayed home safely. He thought again of the way Jongin's upset rang in that cavern. "I'll be sure to scold him, when I find him," he said carefully. Jongin's sister gave him a weak smile, but her hands strayed over a shell, thumb rubbing at it distractedly instead of continuing her stocking.

"Please just ask him to come home. Mom really hates it when he does this."

Kyungsoo promised and gave a small, polite farewell. Instead of pressing forward, he turned back, heading towards the only place he thought Jongin might hide. He wondered if anyone in his family knew about that cavern, or if he was the first person Jongin had been bold enough to share it with. The thought made him feel even more foolish than he did already, worry knotting itself inside of him as he considered their last interaction had been so tense, and so aggressive.

Of course, he should have expected the docks to be empty this early, especially the day after a big storm, but his disappointment was still grew when he saw all the boats moored. The sea rocked them fiercely, and even from his place at the cliff, he could hear the hollow, heavy clunk of wood on wood as the water tried in vain to claim them. He hurried past them until the soles of his shoes began to slip dangerously on the rocks. He dropped the umbrella, and scraped his hand badly on the cliff face as he tried to catch himself, blood welling n the abrasions almost at once. It wasn't deep, but the salty air stung like nothing else and he hissed in dismay and irritation at his palm as he pressed forward.

All the sand was wet as he stomped towards the cavern, and the sand sucked hungrily at his shoes, though thankfully the waves were a long way out. It probably meant the cave would be drier. It wasn't, though the weeds along the walkway weren't nearly as slippery as the other day, and the pool was almost a head shallower without the constant waves refilling it during the low tide. Kyungsoo cursed himself for forgetting a flashlight just as his foot caught something small that clattered away from him. It ricocheted against the cave wall, and he barely stopped it from falling into the pool, catching it with his other foot. It was the same tiny LED flashlight from yesterday, and Kyungsoo quickly bent to pick it up and turn it on. It shone immediately on a pile of clothes at his feet which he'd half-trampled, not even realizing they weren't simply piles of rock or seaweed.

Kyungsoo crouched beside the clothes and recognized the shirt Jongin had last worn around him at once, with its sun-faded graphic. The flashlight must have slipped from the pocket of his shorts. As Kyungsoo gathered them up, he felt the familiar crinkle of paper between the folds, and stopped to carefully pick through them, finding an envelope. It wasn't sealed, or maybe the humidity had undone it before he arrived, and Kyungsoo dove into the letter it contained. The words were brief, and to the point. Even in the brief time they'd had, Kyungsoo recognized that was precisely like Jongin.

 

_I collected some extras. They're in my pocket. Please give them to my mother and my sisters, and keep one for yourself._

_I'm sorry for getting so angry yesterday._

 

Kyungsoo read the note several times before he understood what it meant. His hand shot into first one pocket, then another, rifling through Jongin's shorts until he found the cloth bag he'd seen the other day. It was far emptier-now, containing not even a handful of pearls now, though it seemed to have many of the larger ones.

As he counted, something splashed in the pool to his left, tugging his attention away from the clutch and stopping his heart for just a moment. The fear of that first time, when he realized how deep the pool went, spiked within him, and his thoughts wandered again to all of the horrific and hungry things that could be lurking below the surface. The water in the pool rippled, agitated, but remained relatively still compared to the thrashing of the waves just outside. Kyungsoo aimed the flashlight towards the water just to be sure, careful not to drop the pearls. There was nothing in the water to be seen, though, as murky and bottomless as ever, and little more than ribbons of green and tufts of shaggy brown seaweed floating along its surface.

Kyungsoo turned back to the pearls and counted about a dozen of them. He selected one for himself, one of the smallest, and juggled the bag and the flashlight in one hand to be able to fish it out with the other. Again, there came a splash, and again Kyungsoo startled as if something from the water had tried to grab him. He shone the light out, carefully tracing the edge of the pool, still uncertain and uneasy.

"Thank you," he said softly, and the water ate his words before the cave could touch them. "I'm sorry, too." There came no response. Carefully, Kyungsoo tucked the bag of pearls away, and began to pick his way along the walkway and back out onto the sand. The rain was picking up again, and the umbrella had surely blown away by now. He turned back for one last look, his arms clinging to Jongin's few things as tightly as if they were the true treasure. He blinked, and consequently just missed the way one of those brown tufts dropped suddenly below the surface of the pool with a small _splish_ and the tiniest of ripples, like a perfect dive.


End file.
